WHAT STATISTICAL TEST DO I NEED?

Deciding on appropriate statistical methods for your research:

What is your research question?

Which variables will help you answer your research question and which is the dependent variable?

What type of variables are they?

Which statistical test is most appropriate? Should a parametric or non-parametric test be used?

KEY WORDS:
VARIABLE: Characteristic which varies between independent subjects.

CATEGORICAL VARIABLES: variables such as gender with limited values. They can be further
categorised into NOMINAL (naming variables where one category is no better than another e.g. hair
colour) and ORDINAL, (where there is some order to the categories e.g. 1 st, 2nd, 3rd etc).

CONTINUOUS (SCALE) VARIABLES: Measurements on a proper scale such as age, height etc.

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE: The variable we think has an effect on the dependent variable.

DEPENDENT VARIABLE: The variable of interest which could be influenced by independent variables.

PARAMETRIC TESTS: there are various assumptions for parametric tests including the assumption
that continuous dependent variables are normally distributed. There are specific tests for this within
packages such as SPSS but plotting a histogram is also a good guide. As long as the histogram of the
dependent variable peaks in the middle and is roughly symmetrical about the mean, we can assume
the data is normally distributed (see examples below).

Example of data which is approximately normally distributed Example of skewed data

 Comparing: Dependent Independent Parametric test Non-parametric test
variable variable (Dependent
variable is
normally
distributed)

The means of two Continuous/ Categorical/ Independent t- Mann-Whitney test

INDEPENDENT groups scale nominal test

The means of 2 paired Continuous/ Time variable Paired t-test Wilcoxon signed rank
(matched) samples e.g. scale (time 1 = test
weight before and after a diet before, time
for one group of subjects
2 = after)

The means of 3+ independent Continuous/ Categorical/ One-way ANOVA Kruskal-Wallis test

groups scale nominal

The 3+ measurements on the Continuous/ Time variable Repeated Friedman test

same subject scale measures ANOVA

Relationship between 2 Continuous/ Continuous/ Pearson’s Spearman’s

continuous variables scale scale Correlation Co- Correlation Co-
efficient efficient (also use for
ordinal data)

Predicting the value of one Continuous/ Any Simple Linear

variable from the value of a scale Regression
predictor variable
Assessing the relationship Categorical/ Categorical/ Chi-squared test
between two categorical nominal nominal
variables
Note: The table only shows the most common tests for simple analysis of data.

Examples:
 Are height and weight related? Both are continuous variables so Pearson’s Correlation Co-efficient would
be appropriate if the variables are both normally distributed.
 Can height predict weight? You cannot determine height from weight but you could estimate weight
given height so height is the continuous independent variable. Simple linear regression will help decide if
weight is a good predictor of height and produce an equation to predict weight given an individual’s
height.
 Is Diet 1 better than Diet 2? A researcher would randomly allocate subjects to two groups with one group
following Diet 1 and the other Diet 2. Weight would be taken before and after the diet and the mean
weight lost compared for the two groups. The dependent variable ‘weight lost’ is continuous and the
independent variable is the group the subject is in which is categorical. If the data is normally
distributed, use the independent t-test, if not use the Mann-Whitney test.
 Are patients taking treatment A more likely to recover than those on treatment B? Both ‘Treatment’ (A
or B) and ‘Recovery’ (Yes or No) are categorical variables so the Chi-squared test is appropriate.